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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27325051">Against A Wall</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/GirlWhoWrites/pseuds/GirlWhoWrites'>GirlWhoWrites</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Twilight (Movies), Twilight Series - All Media Types, Twilight Series - Stephenie Meyer</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Addiction, Angst, Body Horror, Depression, Drama, F/M, JaliceWeek20, Romance, Suicidal Ideation, human/vampire - Freeform, trigger warning</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-11-02</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-11-02</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 22:21:48</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>9,963</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27325051</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/GirlWhoWrites/pseuds/GirlWhoWrites</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>If you asked anyone with the surname ‘Whitlock’, they’d tell you that the family was cursed. It was the Whitlock Curse to blame the day the bank took the ranch away from Jasper’s own father.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Alice Cullen/Jasper Hale</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>6</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>20</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Jalice Week 2020</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Chapter 1</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>This fic was posted as part of JaliceWeek20, hosted on Tumblr. Part One was started ages ago, and I was so excited for an opportunity to finish it! </p><p>I've found so many fics about Alice meeting Jasper as a human, but very few ones where Jasper was the human (though some amazing works came out of JaliceWeek20!) and this was one of my explorations about that scenario. Part 2 coming tomorrow &lt;3</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <b>Fifteen.</b>
</p>
<p>He crouches behind Dewey’s Bar, spitting blood onto the pavement, and trying to pretend that whatever is seeping into his jeans is just water, and not runoff from the reeking dumpster beside him.</p>
<p>It’s Tuesday night, and Tuesdays are always the worst. Tuesdays are his mom’s night shifts at the VA hospital. Tuesdays are pay-day. Tuesdays are the only day his father doesn’t pull his punches.</p>
<p>His left cheek and eye are swollen and split, like overripe fruit. He can’t see real well, and the taste of aluminium foil in the back of his mouth makes him suspect another fracture around his eye.  </p>
<p>But was it really a Tuesday night if cerebral fluid wasn’t leaking into his mouth?</p>
<p>He feels bad that his mother is going to walk in at five the next morning, exhausted, to find… well, to find Hettie and Flo asleep in Ava’s bed, as Ava studies and worries. To find Jasper’s bed empty, and Lydia’s too. To find the study door locked, no matter how long she knocks.</p>
<p>In fact, the only thing that Louise Whitlock won’t find when she gets home from work is the god-damned strength of will to leave her fucking husband.</p>
<p>Last time he said that to her face, she started to cry, and that made things worse.</p>
<p>It’s still early, which sucks. There are hours to go until it is safe to move, to drag himself to school, to shower in the locker rooms and get some food out of the vending machine and savour the fact that another Tuesday is behind him. Sheldon isn’t big enough for the other students and the teachers not to notice the bruises on his face, but it is small enough that everyone knows Jeremiah Whitlock, and no one is going to say anything to get him in trouble.  </p>
<p>He could go find Lydia, hide in the tree-house, tell someone who wasn’t family or a local. But he always ends up behind Dewey’s. When he was a kid, it hadn’t just been a bar; it had been been Dewey’s Bar and Grill, and his grandfather used to take him there for fried chicken and ice cream. Dewey had been his Grandpa Jed’s best friend, but even in those halcyon days it hadn’t exactly been family-friendly.</p>
<p>It had become a dive bar sometime around the time Jasper finished middle-school, but it didn’t matter - by then, Dewey and Grandpa were dead, and he was too busy trying to protect himself and his sisters to eat ice cream.</p>
<p>He spits blood again, and rests back against the brickwork. Nothing for it; Tuesdays were always hell.</p>
<p>—</p>
<p>He tries to sleep, amongst the noise of passersby, and remain unnoticed - Jasper’s learnt the hard way that his uncles still frequent Dewey’s, and they will march him straight back home for round two, no matter what he says. Even when he came up with the strength to tell them, about Lydia and Jerry and Tuesday nights, his uncles just tell him to shut up, man up, and maybe Jerry wouldn’t have to whoop his ass.</p>
<p>He thinks of Lydia and hopes she’s somewhere warm and clean tonight. Lydia’s smart enough to stay away on Tuesday nights. Home is never Lydia’s first port of call any night of the week, but never, ever on Tuesdays.</p>
<p>He remembers the last Tuesday night she was home, two summers ago, when Lydia stormed upstairs, a twelve-year-old hurricane with fire in her eyes, and called their father a coward for beating the shit out of Jasper.</p>
<p>Jeremiah Whitlock hadn’t liked being called a coward. Not at all.</p>
<p>Now she is transient, a ghost sister who vanishes at day break; one who bunks down on couches and in treehouses before coming back to her own bed. Their mom and Ava worry about where Lydia gets her money, cigar-sized rolls of dollar bills that she keeps in a tampon box, but he knows.</p>
<p>He knows that his sharp and pointy little sister never let anything stop her, least of all hard work, and that a lot of people in town know that Jerry Whitlock has a lot of anger and a lot of disappointment that he tries to drown in cheap beer and cheaper whiskey. It just makes him angrier. If the only thing they can do is give Lydia Whitlock some work, well, that kid’ll cut the grass, paint the garage, and walk the dog for a few bucks and a drink from a spigot.</p>
<p>It’s easy to say that Lydia is the best of them, making it clear that she doesn’t need their shitty father or their tired mother, but they are all strong in different ways. Ava, who smiles and simpers at their father, waiting for that day when she can buckle Hettie and Flo into her car and take them with her to college in Houston with a middle finger raised in the air. Flo stays quiet, stays alert, darting and hiding when the moment comes, but whose slight of hand belongs to a survivalist magician. And sweet little Hettie, who never lived on the ranch and knew their parents when they were happy, is sunshine and laughter and innocence. The one that reminds them why they stick together.</p>
<p>He’s the boy, so his role is obvious and unquestioned: he takes the punches and slaps and kicks that were meant for their mom, for Lydia, for Flo. He mutters things under his breath so that Jerry doesn’t hear what his sisters are saying, forgets that Hettie is sniffling or that Lydia hasn’t been home in ten days or that their mother has burnt dinner.</p>
<p>He knows his place.</p>
<p>—-</p>
<p>If you asked anyone with the surname ‘Whitlock’, they’d tell you that the family was cursed.</p>
<p>Had been since the Civil War; the youngest son had run off and joined up. Tried to desert two months in, crying for his momma, and ran afoul of someone - or something. He was dead a month later, but no one was exactly sure if he’d been executed for desertion, or if he’d just got in the way of a Yankee bullet. Either way, his last letter was rambling and terrified of something he never named, and his cowardice was rewarded with his bloodline’s constant suffering.</p>
<p>Within the Whitlock family lore, the curse was held accountable for numerous failings - from great-great grandmother Edith running off with one of the Wilkerson boys, to little Brian dropping dead as a doornail one summer day after seven years of perfect health. It was the Whitlock Curse to blame the day the bank took the ranch away from Jasper’s own father.      </p>
<p>It was the curse that had four and a half strapping brothers (Uncle Wyatt only counted as half since he went to the war in the Middle East and got himself blown up before he was even old enough to drink, and left behind a high school sweetheart with a bouncing baby girl they all called ‘Puddin’) father fifteen girls, and only one lousy boy.</p>
<p>Make no mistake about it, Jasper was a lousy heir to the Whitlock name. All three of his uncles reminded him of this every holiday season. Whitlock men were supposed to live and breathe the ranch, were supposed to be football players and champions. They were meant to knock up the head cheerleader and serve eight years in the army, like their brothers, fathers, uncles, and grandfathers before them.</p>
<p>Not snivelling little momma’s boys, who cried themselves to sleep when Sirius Black died, and could charm the birds from the trees. Not boys who helped their sisters catch rabbits, and keep them as secret pets, or name the house cat Socrates. Not boys who sat up all night when their horse had colic, and sit in the stable with her, begging and praying for her to be okay.</p>
<p>He tried, goddamnit. <em>So</em> hard. He was the best shot in the family (something that Uncle Bo had nearly hit him over, that one Thanksgiving. But everyone knew that Bo had the worst temper in the family.) Before things went to shit, he’d been a good student. He’d been able to convince the animals on the ranch to do anything. He was popular, without having any particular friends or putting much effort into it. He took care of his sisters.</p>
<p>But none of it was ever good enough.</p>
<p>Nothing ever was.</p>
<p>—</p>
<p>It’s Roy Lester that chases him off, before six the next morning. Roy runs the grocer next to Dewey’s, and went to school with his father and uncles - still had beers with them ever so often. The way he threatened Jasper and chased him off home whenever he caught him in the alley made Jasper think that they talked about him, and none of it flattering.</p>
<p>So he has to slink home because he stinks and he’s starving. The security at school won’t let anyone in before seven; he’s tried before; it’s not like he has much choice.</p>
<p>In a town like Sheldon, everyone knew everyone. You started kindergarten with maybe twenty other five year olds - most you probably already knew - and spent the next thirteen years with those same kids. You watched Maude Montgomery transform from the aesthetic-equivalent of Danny Devito to Jennifer Lawrence in a single summer, thanks to a late brush with puberty; you were right there when Casey Atkinson was put in a wheelchair and spent seventh grade learning to walk again. You knew that Ariel Turner was diabetic, Marley Harris was asthmatic, and you’d seen thirteen years of peanut-free lunches and birthday parties because Joey Thompson was highly allergic.</p>
<p>The joy of small towns.</p>
<p>Everyone knew that Jerry Whitlock hit his kids and his wife, but no one talked about it - not to their faces, at least. The adults tended to march Jasper home, to face his father’s wrath. The kids tended to get uncomfortable, and look through him. The few people who tried to reach out were from out of town, and were usually passing through - the odd teacher, a new neighbour, a concerned face on the bus.</p>
<p>Better to go home until school opened up.</p>
<p>Louise is in the kitchen, her face pinched and pale, clutching a cup of coffee. She looks hopeful when he walks in, but seems to crumple in on herself when she sees his bloody, swollen face. She looks old as she puts down her mug, and moves to pull him into a hug. He pretends not to notice her shuddering, as she cries onto his shoulder, before pulling away.</p>
<p>“I’ll make breakfast,” she manages, sniffling. “Okay? You must be hungry.”</p>
<p>He grunts and nods, as he heads upstairs. As if scrambled eggs and burnt toast can fix another Tuesday night.</p>
<p>But Wednesdays are good - the longest possible time until another Tuesday night.</p>
<p>He just has to keep telling himself that.</p>
<p>—</p>
<p>
  <b>Seventeen.</b>
</p>
<p>Another Tuesday behind Dewey’s, but this time he’s puking up the few mouthfuls of food he managed before his father hauled him out the back - only because it was his mom’s week off and they were having a big family dinner. Louise resented those mid-week dinners; after a long day at work, having to make dinner for twenty-three people, and somehow find enough plates and chairs was the last thing she wanted to do.It was the only time Lydia would cross their father’s sight line, skinny and defiant.</p>
<p>If it had been a normal dinner, Jerry wouldn’t have dragged him out of the house. He would have beat him in the kitchen, yelling over Hettie’s sobs and Flo’s screams, and Louise’s pleading. He’s had a serving platter smashed over his head before, as well as a beer bottle, and a ceramic pitcher - one that had been made by Grandma Lillian, and Louise had sobbed over those broken shards.</p>
<p>His head is spinning, and he can’t remember exactly what he said to incite his father’s rage, though he remembers Uncle Bo’s jeers when he tried to stand up. The previous week’s wounds have reopened, and are bleeding onto his last decent t shirt. There’s vomit and alley-juice all over his jeans, and he wonders if he should drag himself to the hospital because his world is still spinning.</p>
<p>He wonders what will happen if he dies tonight; if Roy Lester finds him here in the morning, cold and dead. Most of the cops in town are from old families, and they’ve taken Lydia and Jasper back home enough times to know what goes on. It’s easier to picture the cover-up, that they’ll blame him and a make-believe schoolyard fight. Just a tragic accident.</p>
<p>Maybe then someone will help Lydia, help all of his sisters. Maybe it’ll be the thing that makes his mom leave.</p>
<p>He falls asleep facedown in the alley, and wants to cry when he wakes up the next morning to the bellow of school kids heading to the bus stop.</p>
<p>He was <em>so </em>goddamned close to it all being over.</p>
<p>So close.</p>
<p>—</p>
<p>“Do you need some help?”</p>
<p>It’s another Tuesday night, one that has come with busted ribs and possibly a dislocated shoulder. He missed lunch because of an English project, and his father had been drinking early, so he hasn’t eaten since breakfast. It’s making him feel sick, and wondering if anyone will notice if he sneaks in the back door of Dewey’s and grab some food.</p>
<p>And then someone is there and <em>talking </em>to him.</p>
<p>Her voice is high and sweet, and he expects a high school girl, maybe a sorority sister.</p>
<p>She is neither.</p>
<p>She’s only as tall as Flo, with uneven black hair curling around her cheeks. She’s one of the prettiest girls he has ever seen, with huge amber-coloured eyes that remind him of Hettie’s dolls and Lydia’s manga. She’s wearing a ragged button-up over a ruffled mini-skirt and leggings, with boots that look a size too big, a heavy man’s watch that hangs from her tiny wrist, and an ancient looking cadet’s cap - the entire effect makes him think of Oliver Twist as a female circus performer.</p>
<p>She walks over to him, and crouches in front of him, her head cocked to the side like a bird’s. He can only stare; other than the dark smudges under her eyes that speak of many sleepless nights, she is beautiful.</p>
<p>“Are you okay?” she asks, looking worried.</p>
<p>“Yeah,” he croaks, and winches as he jars his ribs. He doubles over, and cries out. She reaches out towards him but backs off just as suddenly.</p>
<p>“You’re hurt,” she says, looking bewildered and frightened. “Where?”</p>
<p>“I-It’s okay,” he manages, trying to reclaim his dignity in front of the prettiest girl. “I’ll be fine.”</p>
<p>The girl huffs. “Ugh, boys,” she mutters. “Hold on a second.” She gets up and slips out of the alley before he can beg her not to get help. In reality, going to the hospital is the last thing he should do - they can’t afford the bill, and  they’ll call home and… no. Just no.</p>
<p>His head is spinning, so he finds it hard to tell how much time has passed, but eventually she returns. She’s clutching two bags, and marches right up to him and crouches back down.</p>
<p>“This will help,” she says, holding out painkillers and a bottle of water. He fumbles with the lids of both, but eventually swallows the pillows down. She watches him carefully. “Don’t drink too fast,” she advises. “Now, I can put your shoulder back in now, or we can wait. It’s up to you.”</p>
<p>He blinks at her slowly. “Now,” he decides.</p>
<p>“Okay,” she looks nervous, but moves forward. It’s all blurry in his mind, but there is something cold, then hot, angry pain, and then he’s blinking up at her again. “Sorry. But trust me, the worst is over now. At least I didn’t break it worse. Hungry?”</p>
<p>He blinks as she reaches for the other bag - a bag of Skittles, a packaged sandwich, two oranges, and a bag of potato chips. He’s not sure if he has a concussion or it’s an odd selection, but he’s also hungry enough that he doesn’t care.</p>
<p>“I nearly had to call Bella, to ask what to get - Edward never let me buy her food after the chicken incident - which was entirely Emmett’s fault - but I think I figured it out okay,” the girl jabbers, taking a seat beside him, and smiles at him. “Better no one knows where I am, anyway.”</p>
<p>“I… thanks,” he croaked, as he reached for the sandwich. She beams at him again, and then frowns.</p>
<p>“Eat, then we’ll finish patching you up. I’ve come too far to watch you die in this disgusting place,” she stretches her legs out in front of her.</p>
<p>The sandwich is dry, but he wolfs it down - an orange too, before he takes a breath - <em>that </em>hurts -and takes another look at the tiny girl beside him.</p>
<p>“Who are you?” he finally asks, and she looks up from her watch.</p>
<p>“Oh! I’m Alice,” she says. “Sorry, I forgot you didn’t know. Do you want your ribs taped now, or are you going to open those?” She points to the Skittles.</p>
<p>“Um, I…” he looks at the bag of candy. “Do you want some?” This feels like a fever dream; maybe he’s passed out and this is just what his banged-up brain has provided him with.</p>
<p>“No,” she shakes her head, and the cadet’s cap tilts a little on her head. “I can’t. They just looked nice. Happy.”</p>
<p>“Happy,” he echoes, looking at the red package.</p>
<p>“I hear that sometimes little things can help,” Alice says. “Come on, cowboy, take that shirt off and let me see those ribs.”</p>
<p>His side is mottled black and blue and purple, and moving in basically any direction is a new adventure in pain. Alice gasps at the sight, and then coos at him in a way that is oddly comforting as her fingers trace his ribs - the coldness of her fingers is actually wonderful against the pain. Then comes the painful stage - as she, not entirely gently enough, begins layering tape over the pain, his head is spinning.</p>
<p>“All done,” Alice says, and her voice is soft, and when he slumps against her shoulder, she doesn’t move away. She smells like old fashioned things, like roses and linen. It reminds him of the old family homestead. He finds his eyes closing, and his side aches in time with his heart, and then Alice’s gentle fingers are running through his hair.</p>
<p>“Sleep, Jasper,” she murmurs, “I’ll keep watch.”</p>
<p>He’s asleep before he realises he never told her his name.</p>
<p>—</p>
<p>She’s gone when he wakes up, and the Skittles are in his pocket - along with the painkillers. <em>Happy.</em></p>
<p>It’s Wednesday morning, and it’s not exactly ‘happy’ he’s feeling, but he’s got candy in his pocket and time to go home for a shower and more food, so Alice was right - the little things <em>do </em>help.</p>
<p>—</p>
<p>She never turns up two Tuesdays in a row, but he does see her again. She’s always more prepared than the first time, with a bag that always seems to contain exactly what they need - in his less lucid states, he is reminded of Mary Poppins’ magic carpet bag as she produces snacks and first aid kits, and even clothing.</p>
<p>Her attempts at first aid are, at best, rough and she accidentally breaks two of his fingers and nearly ends up in tears when he yells in pain, and hugs him so tight, weeping into his neck, that he ends up trying to comfort her.</p>
<p>Sometimes he sleeps. She’s so thin and tiny that her shoulder isn’t a good pillow, and he feels like a shit man, letting such a tiny girl keep watch behind a bar. It wouldn’t take much to break her, and he can’t defend anyone in this state.</p>
<p>But some Tuesdays, he falls asleep anyway, breathing in that scent of fresh roses and linen, and listening to her chatter away about people he doesn’t know, about places he’s never visited, about books he’s never read.</p>
<p>Alice sounds like she’s living a really nice life. One week, she quizzes him on his Spanish before his examine the next day, and her accent is flawless. When her phone buzzes and buzzes and buzzes, and she ignores it, she usually swears - he doesn’t know in what language, one of the Eastern Asian ones he <em>thinks</em> - but it’s definitely a swear.</p>
<p>He wishes he could see her, talk to her, out in the real world and prove to her that he’s not just a beat-up kid. But she’s always gone on Wednesday mornings, and he doesn’t even know how to contact her anyway.</p>
<p>All in all, he met Alice in the reeking alley behind Dewey’s with a concussion, broken ribs, and a dislocated shoulder, and now she’s the best friend he’s ever had in the world.</p>
<p>He’s getting closer to that ‘happy’ concept that she mentioned the first time they met.</p>
<p>—</p>
<p>The last time he sees her, he’s bleeding and he’s pretty sure his eye socket is fractured. He’s pissed with himself because he wasn’t fast enough, smart enough, to stop his father from going after Flo. So he’d thrown a punch at his old man  for the first time because <em>Flo </em>is his baby sister and all haunted eyes and he’ll never forget the sounds of her wailing after the belt struck her, but hitting the bastard back just fuelled him and … <em>fuck.</em></p>
<p>Then Alice is there, in jeans with stars on the knees and a billowy purple top that is just opaque enough to obscure the skin underneath. She looks angry and frustrated, and doesn’t just sit next to him and open her bag like she usually does.</p>
<p>“It’s a stupid fucking decision you’re about to make,” she stamps her foot, “and I am <em>so </em>mad at you right now, but Carlisle and Edward have made me <em>promise </em>not to interfere. Carlisle says that everything I’m doing now is enough. And I’m already in enough trouble, honestly.”</p>
<p>He can taste foil again - definitely a fractured eye socket.</p>
<p>“What?” he manages, snappish and tired. He doesn’t need this. He wants sweet Alice, who helps him patch himself back together, and gets him food, and talks him to sleep. The one who makes him laugh, even when it hurts, and seems to be light-years ahead of him but that’s okay because she’s always so happy about whatever she’s telling him.</p>
<p>“I’m going to say this once,” she enunciates carefully, still glaring. “I will be here every Tuesday. Don’t make a dumb decision. There is <em>always</em> another choice.”</p>
<p>“You’re making less sense than normal,” he retorts. “Either help me, or go away - I’m not in the mood.”</p>
<p>“Happy freakin’ birthday,” she snaps, unbuckling her giant watch, and throws it at him before she storms back the way she came, leaving him behind.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Part Two</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Fuckin’ Whitlock curse comes for all of them eventually.</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Thank you all for your reviews and kudos on this fic! I'm so glad it's being enjoyed. All my notes and ramblings are at the bottom because I like to share my thoughts. </p>
<p>Thank you for reading!</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p class="p1">
  <b>Nineteen.</b>
</p>
<p class="p1">There was a shoebox under his bed with a bunch of stuff in it, that he’s collected over his life. Stuff that was special - Socrates’ collar, a rock shaped like a dog, the rubber spider his grandfather bought him from the dime store. And the last thing he put in it was an unopened back of Skittles.</p>
<p class="p1">He wonders where that box is now.</p>
<p class="p1">—</p>
<p class="p1">Things are hard to remember. The doctors say his memory <em>should</em> return, with time, and everything will stop feeling like someone scooped them all out of his brain and threw them up in the air like confetti.</p>
<p class="p1">He remembers… Ava. No, not Ava. Yes, Ava, his sister.</p>
<p class="p1">She did something.</p>
<p class="p1">Ava lit the fuse that had been dangling over the family for six years.</p>
<p class="p1">Wasn’t Ava’s fault. Never blamed her. He hurt for her.</p>
<p class="p1">Louise found the bit of paper and freaked out, yes. It was Ava’s paper. Evidence. And Louise was shrieking. And Jerry heard.</p>
<p class="p1">Everybody heard. He remembers making Flo and Hettie stay in the kitchen, <em>hide under the table if you need to</em> (the screen door is banging, Lydia is gone like a puff of air at the first sign of trouble; wish she’d taken Flo and Hettie this time). Hettie had already been sniffling, and he’d left the kitchen.</p>
<p class="p1">
  <em>Bang. </em>
</p>
<p class="p1">He’d gotten between Ava and their father.</p>
<p class="p1">He would have killed them both; that look in his eye. There wasn’t love or affection in that gaze. There wasn’t recognition of his children. There was just rage. That’s a look he wished he could forget; of all the things lost in the confetti, he wants to know why that moment that Jerry looked at him and Ava (Ava was bleeding, can’t remember why) is still there?</p>
<p class="p1">Then it’s a blur. Then there’s nothing.</p>
<p class="p1">Then he joins the military. He walks away entirely, with only what he can carry and doesn’t leave any parting words because there’s nothing to be said.</p>
<p class="p1">No. Something happens before that.</p>
<p class="p1">Ava packed her car, yes, packed in Hettie and Flo, suitcases and boxes, and at the last minute Lydia materialises into the passenger seat, whilst their mother tries to … beg? Yell? Ava’s face is black and blue and bandaged, and there was someone he knew who could fix that, with Mary Poppins’ bag…</p>
<p class="p1">Then Ava drives off, and their mom is crying, and he walks straight to the nearest recruitment office even though he doesn’t graduate for another three months because once the bomb has gone off, there’s no taking it back.</p>
<p class="p1">—</p>
<p class="p1">What was the bomb again?</p>
<p class="p1">Bomb. Which bomb?</p>
<p class="p1">Ava’s, not the one that… not the other one.</p>
<p class="p1">Paperwork from Planned Parenthood. There was a baby, but Ava’s already raising her sisters, so she sucked it up, stole cash from their father’s study, and took care of it. She’d thrown the money back in their father’s face that last night, money she’d scrounged from somewhere, and their father had punched her so hard he broke her nose and her orbital bone, and then it gets blurry again.</p>
<p class="p1">His body stings and aches and itches. He recites all the swears he knows in his head, and a few he doesn’t, and he wishes everything would put itself right again.</p>
<p class="p1">
  <em>Bang. </em>
</p>
<p class="p1">—</p>
<p class="p1">The other bomb. That’s why he’s here, in the VA hospital. The one that was strapped to a little boy who ran up to one of the guys in his unit, grinning and clutching a soccer ball to hide the shape obscuring his torso.</p>
<p class="p1">
  <em>Bang. </em>
</p>
<p class="p1">Bombs don’t sound like ‘bang’ either. They are a vacuum of noise and pain and detritus and fire and he now knows the sound-taste-smell of roasted human fresh.They are wiping out all but two members of a unit and a little boy who didn’t have a choice or an idea of what he was getting into.</p>
<p class="p1">The images are burnt onto his brain forever; when he closes his eyes, all he sees is a face roast black and splitting open to reveal the ruby red of the blood and muscle underneath, leaking clear and yellow fluid.</p>
<p class="p1">Empty, black eye sockets staring, just sticky blackened holes.</p>
<p class="p1">Bodies arched and twisted in pain, looking like blacked trees and burnt bark until you remember where you are and what you’re looking at and some of that burnt bark flesh is your own.</p>
<p class="p1">He wishes those memories would disappear.</p>
<p class="p1">Less than a year in the army, and already medically discharged. So much for an escape plan. Has to be a record, shortest army career in Whitlock family history. Shorter even than Uncle Wyatt’s, but Wyatt was smart enough to die outright, so it’s just a damn tragedy instead of a humiliation. He knows how the game is played.</p>
<p class="p1">Fuckin’ Whitlock curse comes for all of them eventually.</p>
<p class="p1">The skin graft hurts like hell, and the medication is still scrambling him, and even when the doctors have pulled out every last stitch, he still looks like some kind of monster pieced together from leftovers. There are still scars, dozens of scars. He asks when they’ll go, but the doctors just brush over his question - plastic surgery is the most solid of answers, but nobody wants to commit to an answer, so he guesses he has it. This is how he looks now.</p>
<p class="p1">They fill his pockets with pills and send him on his way with their gratitude for his service as if he has somewhere to be, someone to go to. He’s got nearly ten months of army pay just sitting there - minus a chunk that confuses him until he remembers he’s been sending money to Ava, a neat row of transactions he’s simply labelled ‘miss you’.</p>
<p class="p1">Should’ve sent her more.</p>
<p class="p1">He stays in Houston, doesn’t bother going home. There’s nothing there for him - his sisters are gone; Ava’s in Austin for college with the girls. Ava, who is somehow juggling three sisters, a college degree, probably a part-time job, and all her own pain.</p>
<p class="p1">Maybe he should go to Ava. But the idea of dragging himself all the way to Austin, to sleep on a couch or something, and have his sisters see this ruined version of him makes him want to hide.</p>
<p class="p1">The idea of his shaking hands, and the crisscross of scars, and limp being seen by sweet Hettie, dear Flo, sharp Lydia, and tired Ava; knowing they’ll hear his uneven pacing, his wild panic, his endless nightmares makes him stay away - he can’t even pick up the phone. He failed them so many times, and he can’t expect them to put him back together now. Ava’s got nothing left for herself, the others are too young; Lydia’d be graduating this year, she doesn’t need a fuckin’ ghoul of a brother hovering in the background after everything <em>she </em>went through. Better they remember him as he was, as the name on a receipt, that whatever he is now.</p>
<p class="p1">His mother is probably still there; working too many hours at the VA hospital and burning toast and being tired. She wrote to him once or twice after he left, and he hated how those letters made him feel. They were all messy apologies and excuses and blame and misery framed in the day-to-day monotony of her life. He felt her hollowness at being left, the mother of five with no children in her home. She should have been helping Lydia pick a prom dress, arranging her graduation party and college tours; driving up to visit Ava at college; sending him inedible cookies; dropping Flo off on her first date, and spoiling baby Hettie even though she’s almost in middle school. But she couldn’t. Because they’d all walked away.</p>
<p class="p1">He didn’t write back. He was too angry then, and now he’s … nothing. She feels like a ghost to him, like she died the first day Jerry hit him, and she slowly faded away every Tuesday after that.</p>
<p class="p1">And Ava’s the only name on his paperwork, for next of kin and power of attorney shit; and that’s only so she could have his money when he was gone.</p>
<p class="p1">His father’s still in Sheldon, he has no doubt of that. He hopes Jerry dies in that empty old house, abandoned by everyone he should have loved better, cared for better and surrounded only by the bottles that he let salt the earth and poison his family.</p>
<p class="p1">His uncles are still there, as reliable as the rising and setting of the sun, most likely ready and waiting to jeer at Jasper for his wasted attempt as a soldier, for his patchwork of skin and scars, for his limp and his confetti memory; to fail so fantastically after ten lousy months. No diploma, no future, no plan.</p>
<p class="p1">Not even old enough for a fuckin’ drink.</p>
<p class="p1">Still a better shot than Bo, though. Sometimes he wants to ask them, though, to look ‘em in the eye and demand to know what they <em>expected </em>from him - the sole Whitlock boy, the heir to a name that meant sweet fuck-all these days - when all they did was punch him when he was down? That letting a kid get beat up, then get insulted and demeaned and mocked and yelled at… that didn’t create a good man, that didn’t create a happy, successful person. They did everything they damn well could to see him gone, failed, erased and that was <em>before </em>he joined the goddamn army. There was no <em>brotherhood</em> in the Whitlock name. Even if he had gotten out unscathed, he would have run til no one knew him, and he wouldn’t have gone home again.</p>
<p class="p1">But he didn’t, and here he is having bitter arguments with old men who aren’t even there.</p>
<p class="p1">He sits in his motel room, takes his pills with water from the bathroom, and occasionally remembers to find food. He doesn’t sleep well on the hard, musty motel bed; the nightmares come in waves even when his brain is like mush from the medications. A car door slamming, a yell from the street, the smell of cooking meat - it all sends him skittering, panicking, pacing. He can’t stop moving, and his bad knee swells up and finally, he gets his hand on some liquor and he ends up slung into the stained bathtub barely able to think. Definitely not able to stand.</p>
<p class="p1">He just wants it to <em>stop</em>.</p>
<p class="p1">The mostly-empty bottle hits the grimy tiles and smashes, but he thinks of a girl with amber eyes and a magic bag and a watch that she gave him - hurled at him. He remembers sleeping on a cold, bony shoulder in an alley, her voice sweet and warm.</p>
<p class="p1">She was so mad with him that last night. He did end up back behind Dewey’s again, on more than one Tuesday, but he didn’t see her again. And it wasn’t long after that when everything went to hell, so he never got to say goodbye. Say sorry for being a dick.</p>
<p class="p1">He can’t quite remember what they were arguing about that last night. Whiskey and valium have chased that memory away, and his head slumps over as he sleeps. Or loses consciousness. Either way, he doesn’t have to exist for a while, and it suits him just fine.</p>
<p class="p1">—</p>
<p class="p1">Time passes. He finds a cheaper motel, because there’s a corner of his brain that is somehow still functional and practical, and he knows what money he has needs to stretch. Someone from the VA calls his cellphone and he ignores it. He takes his pills - less than usual because they’re running out.</p>
<p class="p1">His knee hurts.</p>
<p class="p1">He breaks a lamp and the mirror after a nightmare and ends up at urgent care getting his knuckles stitched up by some intern who asks him too many questions.Tries to give him pamphlets, and he resists the urge to punch the doctor in the face.</p>
<p class="p1">The doctor does write him new prescriptions though. That’s helpful. And he gets something to eat at the cafeteria. It starts out as a bad night and ends up being one of those mornings he almost feels human, as long as he doesn’t look in the mirror.</p>
<p class="p1">That’s why he picks up the phone when the VA call again.</p>
<p class="p1">That’s how he finds himself sitting outside the VA hospital with a paper bag of the shit he left behind. His mother’s letters, his dog-tags, and an extremely broken watch.</p>
<p class="p1">
  <em>“Happy freakin’ birthday.”</em>
</p>
<p class="p1">He looks at it closely now, more closely than he did when he was given it - even if it <em>was</em> thrown at his head, it was a gift in his mind. The brown leather strap is stained and nearly torn through, and the brass buckle bent. The face is cracked in an almost perfect spiral. The face is mottled cream, with neat gold Roman numerals; several have come loose and rattle along the bottom, along with the minute hand. It no works, and he hopes that the internal gears are still functional.</p>
<p class="p1">The watch will need to be repaired professionally, to be taken apart and pieced back together. A new glass face and band, the numerals and hands put back in the rightful place.</p>
<p class="p1">He doesn’t even remember wearing it, that last day. He knew he had it with him the entire time, through basic training and everything, but he didn’t remember wearing it. He’d had some chunky digital thing that told him the weather and GPS and shit that had been responsible for the mutilation of his left wrist.</p>
<p class="p1">Carefully it into his jacket, Jasper stands and begins the walk back to the motel.</p>
<p class="p1">--</p>
<p class="p1">
  <b>Nineteen, still. </b>
</p>
<p class="p1">Sometimes, he thinks about going back to Dewey’s, just to see if she ever turns up again, on a Tuesday. For some reason, when he thinks of her - Miss Alice, in her funny clothes, and her lilting voice - he thinks of her exactly how he remembers her, that she is fixed in time and will never change. That he could return to that alley a week, a year, a decade from now, and she will still be there with her bag of tricks and big golden eyes.</p>
<p class="p1">He thinks about her a lot. He never knew where she came from, how old she was, why she spent Tuesday nights in an alley with him. He hopes she’s safe, comfortable, and happy.</p>
<p class="p1">He hopes she still thinks of him.</p>
<p class="p1">Time marches on, and he can see his twentieth birthday rushing up to greet him. He’s done nothing to change his circumstances - the cheapest hotel room, a fistful of pills on an empty stomach, patchwork sleep haunted by corpses. The PTSD special.</p>
<p class="p1">He finds a bar that respects his service more than his age, and they’re happy to let him drink himself numb in the corner as long as he doesn’t make trouble, and slips out the back if the cops come round. But even when they do, and get a good look at the scars, at his jacket, at the look in his eyes, they usually just nod and move along. No one asks questions, just counts out his crumpled money and then slides his drink along the bar.</p>
<p class="p1">Life doesn’t feel worth much on those nights.</p>
<p class="p1">Stumbling back to the motel, drunk and dull, he never notices the footsteps. He just goes to his room, his <em>home</em>, and passes out on a stained bedcover fully clothed, waiting for the nightmares to kick in.</p>
<p class="p1">—</p>
<p class="p1">When the nightmares press in on him, and he’s lying on the bed staring at the discoloured popcorn ceiling, all he really wants is to go home again.</p>
<p class="p1">Not to Sheldon.</p>
<p class="p1">To the ranch.</p>
<p class="p1">Before Hettie, before Tuesdays, before everything. Where they buried Socrates under the tree with the treehouse, where he learned to ride and would catch rabbits, and everything was easy. He still got told off by his father for being such a disappointment, but back then, they still had the family property, so his father wasn’t so angry.</p>
<p class="p1">He’s stone-cold sober - aside from the Vicodin and Valium rattling around in his stomach - when he decides to go home again. He even stops in at a grimy diner and shovels in a plate of eggs and some coffee before he buys the bus ticket.</p>
<p class="p1">He knows the old place never sold; the bank couldn’t shift it. Sold some of the land, but the old farmhouse just sits there, rotting. The Whitlock curse strikes again and again, into the heart of everything.</p>
<p class="p1">It’s a long trip; the only way out there by bus is to go via San Antonio, and then down towards the old farm on another rural bus that only runs a few times a day. And he didn’t think much about how to get from the last bus stop to the old house proper, but some old guy in a truck takes a good hard look at him - his stained jacket, his limp, the scars twisting around his limbs and under his clothes, and offers to take him wherever he’s going.</p>
<p class="p1">He’s stiff and sore and hungry, but he doesn’t worry about any of that. The driver’s polite, amicable, doesn’t ask too many questions but gives him the number of the only cab in town for his return trip. He nods his thanks and begins limping up the old driveway, towards home.</p>
<p class="p1">The house is… sad. Not like his memories, of blood-red geraniums in the window boxes, and a pile of sneakers and boots in a jumble by the front door. There aren’t any bikes leaning up against the porch railings, either. Hell, the porch has a hole in it, the wooden rotten through. The yard is an overgrown tangle - probably concealing a few snakes.</p>
<p class="p1">The treehouse has long since collapsed, the wooden remains jutting out from the overgrown grass like a shipwreck. Socrates’ little grave is probably still there, under it all, with the brick he and Lydia painted his name on. He was a good cat.</p>
<p class="p1">He’s not going to go into the house, and now that he’s here, he’s not sure why he came at all. It’s just a house he once lived in, like Sheldon. But there is something peaceful about being back here, sitting on the - thankfully brick - front steps and staring out at the road. No cars come by, neighbours are too far away to matter. It’s just him.</p>
<p class="p1">He lets his thoughts float. More than once, he’s wished he’d been able to keep his service weapon, finish the job the bomb started. He thought about other ways - swallowing all his pills till there’s nothing left in the bottle; buying some razor blades and cutting along his seams; finding a motel with rafters he can loop a belt around. But he doesn’t. He hasn’t. He doesn’t know why - the thought is like a mischievous cat looming over his shoulder. The cat with a too-big smile, from Hettie’s books. Sinister yet convincing and trustworthy. But the thought lingers, and right now, he wishes he’d come prepared because … it’s quiet here. It’s quiet and he associates it with good things, and he’s really, really tired.</p>
<p class="p1">His VA shrink said that disassociation was a common symptom of PTSD. There were methods of dealing with it, techniques he could use, but he didn’t bother remembering them. Sometimes it was nice not to feel things, to be entirely separate from himself for a while.</p>
<p class="p1">When he comes back to himself, the afternoon has turned to night, and he’s an idiot sitting outside an abandoned farmhouse in the middle of nowhere, in a town with one cab. He swears under his breath and the two brain cells that are still desperately trying to keep him alive blaze into action, as he fumbles for his cellphone.</p>
<p class="p1">At least it isn’t dead.</p>
<p class="p1">He doesn’t even notice the sound as he dials, but as the phone rings he looks up in confusion, as a woman walks up the drive. She’s small enough for his heart to jump in misguided hope, waiting for that smile, those eyes, and that stupid bag that he placed so much faith in.</p>
<p class="p1">Except, her eyes are red, and her hair is long and brown. Her lips stretch too far like that stupid cat, and she takes the phone from him so gently and crushes it into a fine powder. And he wishes he’d stayed drunk and high instead of staying sober and coming back to his childhood home like some kind of fucking book character.</p>
<p class="p1">She calls him ‘mi amor’ and apologises for what comes next.</p>
<p class="p1">He tries to back away but stumbles on his bad knee, and when she hurls him back up effortlessly, she dislocates his shoulder and probably breaks his arm, and for a moment his vision swims and he yells, and that is only the very beginning of the pain.</p>
<p class="p1">—</p>
<p class="p1">In his few lucid moments over the next seventy-two hours, he wonders when he gets to stop suffering. When he finds the end of the tunnel of pain, from Tuesdays behind Dewey’s, to being half-burned alive, to be put back together and drugged senseless to function, to whatever this woman has done to him.</p>
<p class="p1">It feels kind of like the bomb did, except like it is taking him slowly. If he could open his eyes, he’d expected himself to be blackened and splitting, like the crust of a volcano.</p>
<p class="p1">If he could be sick, he would.</p>
<p class="p1">He thinks he screams himself hoarse. He might just think about doing it.</p>
<p class="p1">Red eyes watch him the entire time, with the ruby-coloured too-big smile, and if he still believed in god or fate or family curses or anything aside from the slow drip of pain in this veins, he would think she was the devil incarnate.</p>
<p class="p1">—</p>
<p class="p1">Time passes. He doesn’t know how much, since he woke up in the rotting remains of his family’s home with a burn in his throat, and Maria waiting for him. She’s quick to reassure him of his new status as a <em>god</em>, quick to find him something to quench the burn (the boy is young but strong and bulky; probably a high school football player. Healthy and full of blood and cries for his momma when Jasper half-rips his throat out.) She is quick to caress his cheek and to kiss him long and deep and to fuck him in the wreckage of the house. </p>
<p class="p1">Maria’s clan is small - only nine of them counting him. They are suspicious of him, of the way he stares and stays quiet. But Maria is quick to ease any of his own misgivings - newborns are entirely unpredictable, volatile. He is her new pet, her treasure, her <em>mijo. </em></p>
<p class="p1">He loves what he is, truly. He leaves the pill bottles rattling in his pockets in the dirt of the farmhouse floor, and strides confidently after his new mistress. His leg is strong again, and all the scars have melted away into smooth, hard stone. He came to the farm looking for something, and he found it - <em>himself</em>, the way he was always supposed to be. If life had been kinder.</p>
<p class="p1">He’s found himself a soldier in another war, but war is a lot easier when you aren’t weighed down with equipment or fear or stupid fucking rules. When winning a battle means glutting yourself on blood, and losing means instant death, and there’s nothing in-between.</p>
<p class="p1">They are so fast now, hunting grounds stretch from Monterrey to Corpus Christie to San Antonio.</p>
<p class="p1">He refuses to go to Austin but sometimes it's hard to remember why. He nearly kills Lucy when she tries to take the others to Austin, and Maria’s lips purse but she says nothing and they go to Laredo instead. They create a few more newborns, but he notices Maria’s attention to him never wavers; they are like pets, whilst he is her devoted prince.</p>
<p class="p1">(Later, he’ll find out it was only six god-damned months he lost. That he turned twenty and Lydia graduated somewhere in an Austin high school, and a bunch of people - mostly social workers and VA employees - were looking for him with the fear of the worst. He’d tell them that whatever ‘worst’ was, they weren’t even close.)</p>
<p class="p1">They figure out his gift during one furious early battle that leaves his arms and neck littered with bite marks, and they <em>don’t go away.</em> The venom works too fast, the bites are too deep, and he is once again a mess. A monster. His rage ripples around the camp, and everyone huddles in on themselves, and even Maria cowers a little, cooing and trying to settle him.</p>
<p class="p1">He <em>makes</em> them afraid, he <em>makes </em>them tremble, he tries to <em>force</em> them into fixing the unfixable.</p>
<p class="p1">Maria is so pleased with his gift, he is never punished for his tantrum. And more bite marks layer upon his skin; when he frets over them, with a sneer on his face, she laughs and promises he’ll have many, many more before they are done.</p>
<p class="p1">—</p>
<p class="p1">
  <b>Nineteen, always. </b>
</p>
<p class="p1">Reconnaissance in the back of Houston is required, and Jasper and Maria take a small group with them. Maria is insistent there are <em>others</em> on their lands, and that is a crime of the highest order. They will destroy the newcomers, feed, and return to Monterrey. They each pick a point of Houston and agree to meet in the centre.</p>
<p class="p1">He is ordered to the northeast, and he goes without resistance; he knows soldiering is following orders, that Maria is his mistress and general and she who must always be obeyed, and Maria lets his resistance to Austin go unremarked upon.</p>
<p class="p1">Most of his human memories are hazy, like they are so very much older than they really are. The streets he stalks are almost familiar, and he keeps his head low - because of the blazing red of his eyes; he has little fear of being recognised.</p>
<p class="p1">There’s an aged but enticing aroma that he follows, that smells of nice, soft things; not fresh enough to guarantee a confrontation (or execution), but one that is a regular in this part of town.</p>
<p class="p1">It’s late enough there are few people in the street, in this working-class part of town. Even the dive bar has gone dark, and only the drunks and shift workers are left stumbling around. It’s not even hard to snag one of the less aware drunks around the wrist and vanish around into the alley with him.</p>
<p class="p1">His blood is nothing memorable, and it’s not hard to make the drunk look like he tripped and slashed his neck on a smashed bottle in the alley. He’s good at staging these scenes; at making things look like terrible, despicable accidents.</p>
<p class="p1">“Oh, Jasper.”</p>
<p class="p1">The words are soft and murmured, and he can’t decide whether they are sad or relieved or something in between. All he knows is that there is a sweet-smelling threat behind him, and he spins around with a snarl.</p>
<p class="p1">She’s only as tall as a child, with uneven black hair curling around her cheeks. She’s one of the prettiest girls he has ever seen, with huge amber-coloured eyes that remind him of porcelain dolls. She’s wearing a sky blue sweater a size too big over jeans with stars on the knees, and staring at him with hope and regret.</p>
<p class="p1">In the back of his brain, that little bit that is not quite human and not quite animals looks at her hard and breathes in her roses-and-rainwater scent and simply thinks, “<em>Yes. Good</em>.”</p>
<p class="p1">But the louder part recognises her as the trail he has been following, the one that Maria wants destroyed. A growl rumbles from within him, and the girl just looks sad.</p>
<p class="p1">“I’m so, so sorry Jasper,” she says, still standing there, not the least be defensive. “Carlisle and Edward <em>forced</em> me to stay away once you left, and then I tried to watch you but I lost track of where you were…” Her eyes are shiny as if she wants to cry. “Do you remember who I am?”</p>
<p class="p1">The question hangs in the air between them, his growl fading away as he stares at her.</p>
<p class="p1">She steps closer, and he glares at her. The animal brain is getting louder - “<em>Yes-good-yes-good-yes-good</em>.” Her emotions are threatening, mostly sad, and she’s tiny. Nothing bad could be so dainty and pretty.</p>
<p class="p1">She’s right in front of him, standing on her toes as she presses her hand to his face. “I’m Alice,” she says simply, and his mind folds itself over and over again in an instant to provide him with an answer to this riddle, to this girl that is so clearly something <em>good </em>and known to him.</p>
<p class="p1">And he remembers.</p>
<p class="p1">
  <em>“Are you okay?”</em>
</p>
<p class="p1">
  <em>“It’s a stupid fucking decision you’re about to make.”</em>
</p>
<p class="p1">
  <em>“At least I didn’t break it worse.”</em>
</p>
<p class="p1">
  <em>“Happy freakin’ birthday.”</em>
</p>
<p class="p1">
  <em>"They just looked nice. Happy.”</em>
</p>
<p class="p1">
  <em>“I’ve come too far to watch you die in this disgusting place.”</em>
</p>
<p class="p1">“Alice,” he says hoarsely, and his memories of her are clear, sharp. He can remember that one strand of hair that always fell into her face; her ice-cold hands roughly patching him up; the constant, lilting companionship of her voice, even when he slept. She is so clear in his mind he wonders how he forgot her in the first place.</p>
<p class="p1">Her smile and emotions bloom with joy all at once, and it warms him all the way through. It’s the kind of happiness that eluded him during his human life, and one he has not felt since waking up with this gift that feels like everyone’s emotions are constantly crawling on him. But this… this is something he wants to wrap himself in like armour.</p>
<p class="p1">“I’m so, so sorry,” her fingers brush a scar on his neck so gently, he wants to shudder.</p>
<p class="p1">“What for?” he asks, wanting to know if he can touch her. She’s so pretty and clean and is a good thing, a precious thing.</p>
<p class="p1">“I see things. Things that are going to happen,” Alice says, as she inspects his arm with a frown. “And when I saw what was going to happen to you in the army, I got mad that I couldn’t protect you anymore. And when you came home, I didn’t realise <em>she </em>was following you until it was too late and I couldn’t work out where you’d ended up. I would have come sooner if I’d known, I swear.” She turns his arm over to reveal a bite mark on his wrist and impulsively kisses it.</p>
<p class="p1">He flinches; the contact magnifies her emotions - and his - and it skitters pleasantly along his body.</p>
<p class="p1">“I don’t…” he begins, his voice still gravelly from lack of use. “I don’t blame you.”</p>
<p class="p1">“I do,” she replies softly, and then she backs away and that is disappointing enough that he takes a step closer to her. She giggles and smiles at him again, and he will follow her <em>anywhere. </em></p>
<p class="p1">“You have to make a choice now,” she says, and he nods hypnotically.</p>
<p class="p1">“You can go back to Maria,” her voice wavers again, and he doesn’t like the coldness that sweeps through her at that statement. “And fight and kill until she’s bored with you. She creates war and destruction and monsters, Jasper, and I don’t want you to go with her. She will <em>destroy</em> you, and I couldn’t bear it if…” She stops, turning her head away and stays silent for a moment.</p>
<p class="p1">“Or,” her voice is steady again, “you can come with me.”</p>
<p class="p1">She holds out her hand.</p>
<p class="p1">“My brothers and sisters are distracting Maria and her friends, for now, you and I can get away, and go somewhere safe,” she continues. “Just you and me together. I can…”</p>
<p class="p1">He never knows what she was going to say because his choice is made, his hand taking hers without a second thought, and she stares up at him with wide eyes, her mouth a perfect ‘o’.</p>
<p class="p1">“Are you sure?” she manages, and he nods. He thinks of pain, human and immortal. He thinks of rage and regret. He thinks of his lowest point as a human, of the permanent bite marks on his arms, and the weight that has only shifted now that he’s immortal, not lifted away.</p>
<p class="p1">He thinks of being happy and safe and clean and peaceful. He thinks of a girl sitting next to him in an alley, with her throat burning, but her only worry is for his bruises.</p>
<p class="p1">The girl who came back for him.</p>
<p class="p1">Everything is still muddled, from his human life, but he knows that lot of people took him apart and remade him in both his lives. She’s the only one who tried to heal him.</p>
<p class="p1">“Let’s go,” he says, and she laughs sweetly, and then they are running faster than anyone can see as they disappear into the night.</p>
<p class="p1">—</p>
<p class="p1">‘Home’ is a cabin in the middle of the forest, somewhere towards the northeast, he thinks. No people around, just wild animals for him to glut himself on. There is the constant running of the river beside them, covering their scent against nomads. It is quiet here - a good place to figure out the edges of his gift, to learn resistance and control, to try and heal and reconcile all that happened to him in such a short space of time.</p>
<p class="p1">Alice tells him Maria was indescribably desperate after his disappearance; their exit covered by a well-time rainstorm that washed all the scents away. She had torn apart Houston in her fury, and now she was in more trouble than she knew.</p>
<p class="p1">Meaning that Maria wouldn’t come hunting for him any time soon. And, he supposes, when she does, Alice will know. Alice knows everything.</p>
<p class="p1">She knows that he likes to sit on their front steps and just stare out at the forest without being disturbed. That the scent of smoke and fire sends him twitching worse than any vampire she’s ever met. That the scars that mark his arms, neck, and face are simply placeholders for the ones he gained as a human, and his disgust over them lingers from the injuries he suffered in war. That he misses his sisters, and they are one of the reasons he is so resolute in his control training. That, if nothing else, he will say goodbye and fake his death to give them closure. Alice promises him that she knows someone who can help them figure all those kinds of details out, but she wants him to see his sisters one last time almost as badly.</p>
<p class="p1">He knows that Alice loves him, as truly as any one has loved before. That feeling never wavers, not through his rages, his depressions, his disassociation. That just watching him read a book on their (broken) couch has joy blooming inside her. He knows that Alice will never pressure him, never ask him for more than he is ready to give - and because of that, he is willing to give her anything she asks. But she hasn’t asked him for anything, yet.</p>
<p class="p1">Some days are harder than others, especially when Alice talks to him about her family - the one she walked away from for him - and he knows that she wants the both of them to return to the Cullens sometime in the future. And he feels obliged to do it, eventually, since her jumble of siblings were a part of his escape plan - the most dangerous part if it involved aggravating Maria. But she never asks, just talks to him about them.</p>
<p class="p1">But mostly, he’s okay. Good, even. Animal blood is disappointing, and sometimes he’s so agitated he can’t sit still and wishes for … a battle, to run, to do <em>something</em> other than sit, and read, and hunt animals, and talk. Alice blames it on his newborn year, and he tries so hard to contain it, but it’s <em>hard. </em></p>
<p class="p1">She tries to make it better, and on days that he can stand to be touched, she teaches him all the old-fashioned dances she knows, and he spins her around and sometimes it does make it better.</p>
<p class="p1">He’s got regrets, a laundry list of them, but Alice says that isn’t unusual; it takes very specific circumstances to be changed - especially young - and be satisfied with the final outcome. When he asks her regrets, she shrugs and admits that she doesn’t even remember being human. Leaving him unprotected is her biggest regret, and that makes her sad, which he doesn’t like the feeling of.</p>
<p class="p1">So he puts his arm around her, and she curls against him, and that makes the sadness evaporate, and she beams up at him with golden eyes he could drown in, and one thing he will admit is - that despite the pain and unhappiness that followed him from human to immortal - that he will never, ever regret taking her hand.</p>
<p class="p1">--</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>- I know that the ending isn't all sunshine and roses because transforming someone does not make them 'perfect' or emotionally healed; I think the closest we get in canon to someone well-adjusted is Emmett. All the other Cullens can be inferred as having baggage, regrets, dubious mental health. (Vampire Bella is very dull and unsatisfying because of her 'perfection'.)</p>
<p>- Jasper is very, very damaged, and it's easy to fall into addictive behaviours when you're vulnerable. Whether Jasper was abusing his meds is up to your imagination, but I liked that idea that as much as he condemns his father for his alcoholism, it's in his genes to be susceptible to the same thing and he's so depressed at that point he doesn't recognize his own behaviour. </p>
<p>- The romance is quite slim too, but again, Alice loves him and he will love her, but it takes time to heal and starting a relationship with someone who has had such a rapid parade of trauma who is also a newborn who has come from the Southern Wars is just a bad idea, especially when he's so dependent on her. I envisage that they wouldn't return to the Cullens until Jasper had reconciled himself to everything and they were a couple with a healthy, balanced romantic relationship. </p>
<p>- I know that SMeyer says that Maria is 19 but no. I see Maria in her early-mid 20s; pretty much as she appears in the Eclipse movie. Plus having her be older than Jasper both physically and vampirically definitely adds more of a power imbalance - and (in general, not specific to this fic) I think that juxtaposes nicely with him being one of the oldest of the Cullens later on, and contrasts Maria with Carlisle/Esme. </p>
<p>- Yes, I did think for a moment that the doctor who Jasper thinks is an intern who patches up his hand might be Carlisle, but I also like the idea that Carlisle and Esme are tucked up at home somewhere, totally unaware of Alice's escapades and just welcome her home when she reappears. Edward is totally her parole officer in this 'verse, and he fails more than fifty percent of the time. </p>
<p>- I'm toying with the idea of a few outtakes from this 'verse; Maria tracking down her lost soldier and Alice throwing down with her; Jasper contacting his sisters; maybe some drabbles about Alice popping up at the Cullen house every few weeks and trying to get advice without admitting what she's up to. We'll see.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
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